


A Prickly Pair

by AtypicalOwl



Series: OAMF [3]
Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Crack, Gen, but still a very healthy amount of crack, with a side of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 01:07:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtypicalOwl/pseuds/AtypicalOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the lobby of the MetLife building, a lone barrel cactus came into being, hiccuped out by a white hole in a time of need.</p><p>This is the story of what may have happened next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Prickly Pair

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set in the same universe as Only A Mere Florist, but is noncanonical to it. It also takes place after [One Summer's Day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4244082) and references the cactus Roshaun received in that fic, so you may wish to read that oneshot first.

Why had he taken it?

Perhaps it was a trophy, tangible proof that, despite everything, he had still managed to end the life of the one who created it.

Perhaps, it was a reminder of the selflessness that had led to that life's creation, and the preservation of all other life on the planet.

Perhaps, he merely saw a life, brought spontaneously into being by one with no clue what they were doing, and…

And what?

Saw something he could corrupt?

Something he felt pity for?

Something new, a life brought about spontaneously and accidentally, utterly one of a kind, nothing else like it in the universe this far or ever again? A collectors item of a sort?

Perhaps, it was a token scrap of the light that he had left behind, greedily grabbed once more and brought with him for comfort, like a security blanket.

Perhaps, he did it for the _#aesthetic_.

Perhaps, in the end, his reasons do not matter. They are inscrutable.

And perhaps, they are not ultimately relevant.

The fact of the matter is, a potted barrel cactus appeared spontaneously in the lobby of the MetLife building, and vanished the same day, just as suddenly.

For equally inscrutable reasons, the Lone Power named Its cactus Bernard.

 

~~~~~

 

The bell above the door tinkled a merry little chime when It pushed it open.

“Hateful little trinket of cheap metal and false happiness. May you rust before your time,” It grumbled under Its breath.

The chiming drew the attention of the man watering flowers in the middle of the shop. He turned, wiping his free hand on his apron. “Hello, welcome to—” the man trailed off, eyebrows rising in surprise as he recognized his visitor. The man swallowed, and continued, in a falsely cheerful tone, “Looking for more lilies today, or something else?”

He did a decent job of hiding his uncertainty, but there was no disguised arthropod wizard to act as his backup today, and the florist was obviously acutely aware of that fact.

The florist had extended his forgiveness, but he was still human, with all of the messy emotions such as fear and anger that come with it.

The florist had extended his forgiveness, but he had no real idea of how It may reciprocate.

The florist had extended his forgiveness. It didn’t have any reservations about utilizing that fact to Its advantage, especially on a matter so important.

“Do you know about cacti?” the Lone Power asked Harry Callahan.

Harry blinked. “What?”

“Cacti. _Ferocactus Wislizenii_.” The Lone Power made a small gesture, and a potted barrel cactus fell out of thin air and into Its hands. It brandished the pot at Harry. “This pathetic looking thing in a pot that I am holding. Do you know how to take care of them?”

“What?” Harry shook his head, like a dog trying to clear water from its ears. “I mean, yes, I do, but why are You in my flower shop _asking me about a barrel cactus?”_

The Lone Power sniffed. “Bernard is sick and I need to know how to take care of him. Plants are your specialty. I require your assistance.”

“I don’t. Ber- WHAT?” Harry stuttered, too confused to articulate any of his many questions. He blinked several more times, but then pushed past the Lone Power to flip the sign in the window to ‘CLOSED.’ “Aren’t you a celestial Power? Why do you need _my_ help with _your_ cactus?”

“The preservation of things that grow is rather not my specialty,” It said, slowly, enunciating clearly, as if talking to a small child or a very unintelligent creature. “It is, however, _your_ specialty.”

It was beginning to regret coming here in the first place. It didn’t have much patience for these matters.

“Ugh.” Harry ran a hand through his hair, standing it on end. “Ugh. Okay, cacti aren’t exactly my department, but I’ll take a look. Set it down on the counter there, would you?”

It glared at Harry. “ _His_ name is _Bernard,”_ It hissed.

Harry put up his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, okay, put _Bernard_ on the counter and I’ll take a look.”

The Lone Power did so, noting with mild alarm the way the sickly yellow-green plant wobbled a little.

“Hmm.” Harry peered closely at Bernard, from this angle and that. “Is it okay if I spin him?”

The Lone Power nodded.

Harry carefully rotated Bernard’s pot to get a look at him from all angles. “Right, as I said, I’m not a cactus expert, but this looks like a pretty cut and dry case of etiolation to me.”

From the terrible way Bernard was looking, It was expecting Harry to say that word meant something like “malignant fungal infestation.”

“Is it... Treatable?” It asked.

Harry nodded. “It just means he hasn’t been getting enough sunlight. Looks like he’s been living under fluorescent lights to me. _”_

“But. He is a _cactus. They are hardy.”_ The Lone Power faced Bernard. “ _You are a cactus,”_ It hissed in the Speech. “ _And more than that, you were literally forged from the heart of a star. How in this Universe are you lacking in starlight?”_

Bernard did not reply.

That was another concerning thing about this cactus. It did not seem to talk. It was not bound into muteness, the way some of Its previous tools had been. No, the thing was just _stubborn._

Harry, who had been watching this exchange with something between mild amusement and alarm, said “Look, just do something to get him some more sun. Move him closer to a window, put him outside in the afternoons, things like that. Don’t overdo it, or you’ll shock him with too much at once. And he’s probably always going to be a bit misshapen, because the bad growth is permanent.” Harry paused for a moment, thoughtful. “Unless you want me to call Nita? She’s good at healing, she could probably help.”

The Lone Power sneered. “No, I believe I can take care of Bernard myself, there is no need.”

Harry sighed. “Okay then. Just one more thing before you go.” He stepped away from Bernard and ducked behind the counter, rummaging for something under it. “Aha.” He tried to stand up, but banged his head on the counter, rattling Bernard in his pot.

The Lone Power reached out to steady Bernard, but mistakenly placed a hand on the side of the cactus. It managed to keep from making a sound, and quickly put Its hand in Its pocket, to hide the damage as Harry stood up, rubbing his head.

“Really ought to put some foam there, I always seem to do that… Anyway, here’s some fertilizer,” Harry said, placing a small packet on the counter. “Follow the directions on the wrapper, it should help perk him up. When he starts getting too big for his decorative ceramic britches, come back, and I’ll help you repot him.”

The Lone Power nodded, and then vanished between one blink and the next, taking Bernard and the packet of fertilizer with him.

Harry stared at the place Bernard had been sitting, then exhaled a shaky breath and went in the back to grab his phone.

Nita picked up on the first ring. “Dad, it’s the middle of the day, is everything okay?”

“Honey,” he said, grabbing a sticky note so he could remind himself to debit the fertilizer later, “You will not _believe_ Who just came into the shop, and for what…”

The door bell tinkled again. “Ah, sorry hon, hang on, someone just ignored the ‘closed’ sign again…” Harry set the phone down and poked his head out of the back room.

The Lone Power was standing in the middle of his flower shop again, hands in Its pockets.

“Uh, did you forget something?” Harry asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” The Lone Power stared intently at Harry. “Do you know the best way to remove cactus spines from flesh? I am asking for… An associate of mine. Who was caring for Bernard. And suffered an unfortunate accident.”

Harry blinked. “Uh, tweezers? If they’re from Bernard, the spines shouldn’t have barbs, so just pull them out and disinfect and bandage it. If your “associate” shows any signs of infection, get them to a doctor or medic-Power or whatever you have. Otherwise it’ll just heal.”

“Noted.”

The Lone Power vanished once more.

“Dad? Dad, are you there?” Nita’s tinny voice called from the back room.

“Yes honey,” he said, picking the phone back up. “Say, did you know that celestial Powers That Be can still get stabbed by cactus spines? Because I sure didn’t!”

“Dad! What _happened_ today?”

 

~~~~~

 

“Hold still.”

“But it _hurts.”_

“ _Hold still or you will never move again.”_

“Holding still, boss. Ow!”

“What did I just say?”

“I can’t help it! It hurts! It’s a reflex!”

“How did this happen, anyway?”

Akthanath wheezed a wet little sigh and waved one of zeir tentacley limbs at the small table across the room, where Bernard sat innocently. Or, as innocently as a barrel cactus that has splashes of olive green blood across its remaining spines can sit. Akthanath glared at it. “I bumped into that table and it fell.”

“He,” the Lone Power interjected, punctuating the remark by none-too-gently yanking another spine out of Akthanath’s tentacle. “Bernard is a he. Do _not_ misgender my cactus.”

“Fine, _he_ fell and I caught him. By the sharp and pointy bit.”

“How idiotic and clumsy of you. Only a lesser being would be so imbecilic as to catch a falling cactus by the spines. Let this be a lesson to you.”

“Yes Boss.” Akthanath winced as another spine was tugged free. “Say Boss, you’re pretty handy with those tweezers. I’d swear you’ve done this before. Are you seeing other assistants? OW!”

The Lone Power dropped the spine It had just plucked into the air, and it evaporated into dust. “I may try another assistant if you cannot tell me how the new budget is shaping up.”

Akthanath winced and tried not to wiggle. “It’s all balanced out in the end, and that energy surplus you created is going into storage. Not everyone’s happy about the cut corners, though.” Ze glanced quizzically at the Lone Power, who was roughly turning zis tentacle around, looking for more spines. “Why are we banking all this energy, anyway?”

“We need to save up for a star.”

“A star? Why?!” Akthanath was so startled that ze ripped zeir tentacle out of the Lone Power’s hand. Ze shivered as the Power glared at zem and roughly grabbed the tentacle back.

“So, according to today’s figures, how long will it be before we can afford a small to medium sized F or G class star?”

“Uh.” Akthanath rolled many of zis eyes sideways as ze thought. “At minimum? We’re looking at 47 years for just a red dwarf. OUCH!”

The Lone Power let go of Akthanath’s tentacle and eyed the olive green blood oozing from the punctures, then snapped Its fingers. Crisp bandages appeared around the wounds. “Find a way to make it sooner.”

Akthanath drew zis tentacles back and wiggled them experimentally, testing the feel of the bandages. They were a little tight, but ze wasn’t going to complain. It was a fairly recent development that the Lone Power would care enough to take on cactus-injury-medic duty instead of throwing the tweezers at Akthanath’s beak and snidely telling zem to take care of it zeirself.

Still, it was a terrible idea to lie to the boss. “We’re tight as it is, boss! You know all the little things that go into getting a star in less than ten million years; you got the matter accretion fees, the rapid ignition penalty, the mid-spectrum surcharges… 47 years is pretty darned good! Why are we doing this rush for a star that’ll just burn out in a few billion years?”

The Lone Power’s expression darkened. “My whims and ways are _not_ to be questioned, Akthanath.”

 

~~~~~

 

When Harry came into the flower shop that morning, he was startled to see Bernard sitting in the window, a large sign tied to his pot that read “I am a shop plant, I am not for sale.” A smaller note was sitting nearby, addressed to him.

“Harry Callahan,” it read.

“For purposes related to the care and well-being of the barrel cactus colloquially designated ‘Bernard,’ I am borrowing a small amount of energy from your world’s ambient sunlight, to be repaid in full no later than JD 2464914.147512.

“In order to minimize impact on the energy consumption of your universe, I have calculated the potential paths of the photons involved in the reactions in the .75 square meter space that is occupied, and none of their potential paths involved delivering energy to any vital systems. If this does interfere with the energetic operation of your local system, you may move Bernard to an appropriate, cactus-safe alternate location of your choosing.

“Bernard thanks you for the loan of energy.”

The note was unsigned.

Harry blinked, spending a long moment trying and failing to convert the Julian date into something more familiar to him (Nita had tried to teach him how once. It hadn’t stuck, obviously. He would ask her to translate for him later.)

He looked from the cactus to the note again, then sighed and started rearranging the window so that Bernard could get more sunlight. The place the Lone Power had put Bernard’s pot got some, but the poor thing looked rather sickly.

 _What a Universe the Lone Power must live in,_ thought Harry, _if light and energy are so scarce and precious that every photon must be accounted for, and there isn’t enough to spare for a single cactus._

As an afterthought, he grabbed a pad of paper and scribbled a quick note, tucking it under Bernard’s pot.

“Bernard can have as much sunlight as he needs. Don’t worry about paying it back, sunlight is free here, and I’m happy to share.”

 

~~~~~

 

"You know, when I said he could have as much sunlight as he needs, I didn't mean for you to overdo it quite this much."

"How was I supposed to know that a desert plant — which has undergone millennia of evolution in order to become specifically adapted to an environment with an extreme amount of sunlight — could get sunburned?"

“Just about every living thing can get sunburned! It doesn’t matter if it’s a plant or a pig! Too much UV radiation and anything can get fried!”

“I would love to hear you tell that to a certain Pig I know… Lord knows his ego could use being told he can become transcendent _bacon…._ ”

Roshaun looked back and forth between Harry Callahan and the Lone Power's present physical avatar, then at the potted barrel cactus sitting on the counter between them. It was a different species than the one that Harry had given him previously, but he knew enough about Earth cacti by this point to realize that it looked rather unhealthy. There were large patches of white, scarred flesh dappled across its skin, and even the portions that were still green had a yellow tinged pallor to them.

So. The cactus was sick.

That did not explain a single thing about why he had come into the flower shop today to find Dairine's father gently scolding the most terrible of all the Powers on proper plant care, and said Power's lack thereof.

Neither of them seemed to notice him entering the flower shop, nor did either of them so much as twitch when he let out a very un-kingly squawk of surprise at the sight.

"Terrible, isn't it?" said a new voice.

Roshaun glanced around, confused, trying to figure out who had spoken. Harry and The Lone Power were still in the middle of their argument over the logistics of a cactus getting a sunburn, and there seemed to be no one other than himself and them in the shop, which was closed, so there should be no wayward customers wandering in.

Not that that had stopped people from trying to open the locked door, even when the lights were out and the closed sign was in the window, but Harry assured him that was a fairly normal part of working in an earthly retail store. Roshaun personally thought that for a consumer to have so much blatant disrespect for an institution providing them with much-needed goods and services was unthinkable, but Harry just shook his head, said "that's the way capitalism goes," and refused to speak on the subject any more, for fear of raising his blood pressure unduly.

"They've been at it for almost 20 minutes now," the voice said, "and it's really starting to get aggravating. All I want out of life is a nice pot, some fertilizer, and some peace and quiet, but it's starting to look like I won't even get the first one today, you know?"

"Tell me about it," said another new voice, this one more familiar: it came from the potted cactus that Roshaun was carrying. "This one has been putting off getting me repotted for weeks now! Always the excuses about 'royal duties,' or 'saving the universe,' or whatever. It's getting very old."

Roshaun blinked and realized that the first speaker was, in fact, the sickly looking cactus sitting on the counter.

"Pardon me," Roshaun said to the cactus, "but can you tell me why the Starsnuffer is here and having an argument with Mr. Callahan about sunburns?"

"Oy! Don't call him that!"

Roshaun sighed. "I know he said that I can start calling him ‘Dad’ if I want, but at this stage in my relationship with his daughter, I do not feel that is appropriate.”

"Oh, you utterly daft mix of clay potting soil," said the cactus. "I wasn't talking about the florist!"

Roshaun really didn't know what to say in response to that.

Fortunately, he was saved from having to come up with a response, because at that moment, both Harry and the Lone Power finally noticed his presence in the flower shop.

Harry heaved a relieved sigh, and said, in a voice just a touch too loud, "Roshaun! So glad you could make it!"

The Lone Power simply raised an eyebrow.

Roshaun shifted his cactus into one hand, and raised the other in an awkward wave. "Hello Mr. Callahan." He paused briefly, considering. "Fairest and fallen, greetings and… Nice cactus?"

"Yo," said Roshaun's cactus.

"Hello," the Lone Power said.

For a long, awkward moment, the flower shop was silent, except for the light rustle of some rose leaves that were in the path of the air conditioning vent.

"Oh, come on, aren't you going to introduce me?" asked Roshaun's cactus in an impatient tone.

"Uh," Was Roshaun's eloquent response.

"Uh," said Harry, in an almost identical tone. "Was it just me, or did that cactus just talk?"

"Well, this one has more ears than a field of corn doesn't he?" said Roshaun's cactus.

"Be nice, Gertrude," Roshaun said, giving the pot a small shake. "This is Gertrude, she has no manners. Don't mind her."

The Lone Power smirked. "Well well, it seems you do not lack in wizardly talent as utterly as I had previously thought, Harold."

"That cactus just talked." Harry squeaked.

"I've always talked," Gertrude said. "It's just that you have finally learned how to listen."

"This is too much," said Harry, and indeed his face was beginning to look as white as the sunburns on the Lone Power's cactus. He sank slowly to the floor, vanishing behind the counter that held the cash register.

"And how come you never talk to me?" the Lone Power asked Its cactus.

The cactus was silent, but somehow, the silence gave off the aura of a shrug. It hadn’t had any trouble talking to Roshaun earlier, so presumably it was intentional.

"Is he done having his existential crisis yet?" Gertrude asked. "I'm really looking forward to getting my new pot, and the longer he's there writhing on the floor questioning his entire view of the universe, the longer it will be before I'm settled in and rooting in that new fertilizer compound he was talking about."

From behind the counter, Harry moaned gently.

Roshaun took pity on him. It must be quite overwhelming for him. "You know, honestly, the fact that you are picking up enough of the Speech to be able to hear Gertrude is rather unsurprising." Harry poked his head over the edge of the counter to cast a very questioning look at Roshaun. "Just consider Carmela."

The Lone Power shuddered minutely. It very much did not want to consider Carmela.

"In the long run, what concerns me much more than that, is the fact that you have a direct physical manifestation of the Lone Power standing in your flower shop. To borrow a phrase from Dairine, 'what's up with that?'"

"I am here for presumably the same reason as you, little Sun King." Lone Power said, "To get my cactus repotted."

"Mr. Callahan! You do know Who that is, right?"

Harry, by this point, had recovered enough from his unexpectedly-verbal-cactus-induced trauma to lever himself upright once more. "Yes, yes, of course I do Roshaun. Don't you think I've already gotten this lecture from both my daughters, plus once from Kit for good measure?""

The Lone Power cleared Its throat. "I would thank you to not talk about me as if I am not here."

"Look, he's pretty chill, all things considered," Harry said, completely ignoring the Lone Power and coming around to the front of the counter to face Roshaun. "He asks me weird cactus questions a lot, but I'm happy to help, given that he's trying like the dickens to actually keep something alive for once. That's something I can get behind." He threw a friendly arm over the Lone Power's shoulders, ignoring the way the Power bristled. “Just two green thumbs, trying to take care of a cactus. It sounds almost like a sitcom!”

Roshaun set Gertrude carefully on a nearby shelf, afraid that he was either hallucinating, or that, since his sanity seemed to have escaped the atmosphere, his legs would be the next to go out from under him. He figured that whichever option it was, it would behoove him to leave his cactus on a stable, safe surface. "You are helping the Lone Power with cactus care. You are befriending it for the sake of slowing entropy."

Harry nodded. The Lone Power stared pointedly at the arm that was still around its shoulders, but made no obvious move to shrug it off.

"Harold Edward Callahan, you are officially the most terrifying non-wizard I know. And I am _including_ Carmela in that assessment."

The Lone Power shuddered, more visibly this time. "Considering how annoyingly insistent she was that Bernard wear this bow," the Lone Power freed himself from Harry's embrace and pointed at something tied around Bernard's pot, "I concur with your descriptive adjective of choice."

Roshaun cautiously took a couple of steps forward to better see what was on Bernard's pot. The Lone Power made no move to attack him, so, with mild trepidation, he focused on the cactus’ decoration. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be a bowtie patterned with… Were those eggbeaters?

_Wait, no…_

_Oh no she didn't._

Roshaun looked from the bow tie patterned with laser dissociators to the Lone Power, and back again.

"It is indeed very ‘Carmela’ to give Bernard a declaration that reminds you of that time she shot you in the face."

The Lone Power opened its mouth to say something, but Harry cut it off. "You kids play nice now, there will be NO cosmic battles in my flower shop. Take it outside the atmosphere if you must. I will just be waiting here, repotting these cacti, since I'm apparently the only levelheaded humanoid in this room." He picked up Bernard's pot, and brought it over to the shelf that Roshaun had put Gertrude on. "Roshaun did you bring your gloves? No? Okay let me go find a spare pair. Roshaun, you're a size large right, and what's his face over there looks more like a medium…”

The Lone Power opened its mouth again, but Harry was having none of it. He shook a finger in the Lone Power’s face to shush It. "He has freakishly long Wellakhit fingers, there's nothing wrong with wearing a medium, in fact, I wear a medium…" and he just kept babbling on like that, ignoring the way that Roshaun and the Lone Power were staring at each other over their respective cacti.

“I have a feeling this is going to be a long day,” said Gertrude.

 

~~~~~

 

It really shouldn't have been such a surprise that Nelaid showed up unannounced the next day. "My son is worried about you," he said, striding out of the fading glow of the transit circle and scaring the ever living daylights out of Harry, who had been kneeling next to a rhododendron in the yard, carefully searching for evidence of the aphid infestation that had already claimed a couple of trees down the block.

"Should I be worried about you as well?" Nelaid said, looking down. "Or is your prone position an aspect of Earth gardening rituals that I have not been previously made aware of?"

Harry grunted something off-color, and levered himself to his feet. "It's fine, it's fine, I try to have a heart attack every day whether I need one or not."

Nelaid tilted his head minutely to one side. "This does not reassure me."

"Figure of speech." Harry brushed dust off the seat of his pants.

"You have a leaf in your hair." Nelaid delicately plucked the offending foliage away.

"Give me that," Harry said snatching the leaf out of Nelaid's hand. He held it close to his face, peering at it as though the veins and the chlorophyll held the secrets of the universe, or more importantly, the secrets that the neighbors three houses down had been keeping. Namely, that they had not sprayed for the aphids like they insisted they had.

"Lying little stinkers," Harry grumbled.

"Unless you have a proficiency in the Speech of which I have not yet witnessed, I doubt that the small insects residing on that leaf have told you any untruths."

Harry tossed the leaf back onto the bush carelessly. "Shut up, Spock."

Nelaid raised one eyebrow in a perfect Vulcan impression. "The hell I will, Jim."

Harry shook his head, chuckling. "I knew I never should have shown you the one with the whales." He shot one more glare down the block for good measure, then sighed and dusted his hands off on his jeans. "I believe you are saying something about Roshaun before we got distracted by The Voyage Home?"

"Ah, yes." Nelaid's expression, which had been light and teasing, darkened into something more serious. "He told me a very disturbing story involving an altercation with The Lone Power. Am I correct in understanding that, somehow, a cactus was involved?"

Harry grimaced, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "Okay, first of all, it was your son who threw the first clod of potting soil, and second of all, when I told them to take it outside the atmosphere, I wasn't expecting them to actually do it. The neighbor’s kids did get a kick out of the auroras that night, though.” Harry paused for a second, remembering something. “Oh yeah, and please remind Roshaun he needs to come back at some point so we can finish repotting Gertrude, because we never actually got around to it after the bag of fertilizer hit the ceiling fan."

Nelaid stared.

 

~~~~~

 

"How did this even happen? You're supposed to be a monarch, shouldn't you be better at diplomacy?" Harry hissed under his breath, leaning in so that only Nelaid would be able to hear him.

"Harry,” Nelaid whispered back, “It is modeling Itself after _your_ species currently, and I am only familiar with _Wellakhit_ diplomacy, so really, you should have been the one able to talk It out of this."

"Who am I to deny Him a potentially valuable learning experience about Earth life and culture?" Harry asked, tinting his whisper with an over-exaggerated sarcastic tone.

"You could've at least tried!” Nelaid gestured at the figure they were hovering behind, a tall redhead browsing a selection of handmade flower pots. “And doesn't our friend use 'It' pronouns?"

"Yes, technically, but those pronouns have a tendency to weird out the people on this planet that don't regularly consort with the Powers that Be,” Harry whispered. “We talked about it, and He agreed to 'He' pronouns in public in order to remain undercover."

"Oh, so you worry about not misgendering the Power that invented death at the farmer’s market, but you couldn't talk Him out wanting to come along in the first place?" Nelaid made a gesture that seemed like he was going to throw up his hands, but then aborted approximately a quarter of the way through, and forced his arms to his sides in order to avoid drawing attention.

"Using correct pronouns is important, no matter Who they are referring to,” Harry said.

"I never denied that,” Nelaid whispered, “However, gender is not a large concern of mine at this moment, given the fact that we just voluntarily brought a direct manifestation of The Lone Power to a large outdoor gathering that is very exposed and very crowded!”

“I told you, it’ll be good for Him. See, look, he’s appreciating the local art!” And indeed, The Lone Power seemed quite interested in a selection of handmade flowerpots.

“Is He… What was the phrase Dairine taught me… Making ‘puppy dog eyes’ at that ceramic pot?”

“I guess you’re not wrong. Do you think He wants it for Bernard?”

“I doubt it, it seems… Rather garish, for His tastes.”

They both watched as The Lone Power set down the pot It was looking at and turned to move on.

“No, look, He’s leaving… He looks sad… Oh gosh, Nel, quick, distract Him so I can buy that pot for Him!” Harry grabbed Nelaid by the arm and shoved him towards the retreating Power.

“Wait, what? Why me? Why am I the distraction?”

“Because I need to check what kind of drainage the pot has first, of course! Now go!”

“Harry! This is quite undignified!”

 

~~~~~

 

The next week, Bernard showed up in the flower shop again for sunbathing, again with a note assuring the used energy would be repaid. Harry took the opportunity to try out his new gloves and move him into the pot he bought at the farmer’s market. It was rather larger than the cactus needed, but the design was cheerful, and he would grow into it someday.

A week after he repotted Bernard, the aphids had mysteriously vanished from his entire block. He was not sure whether to be thankful that he didn’t have to nag the Harrises to spray their trees again, or to be concerned about the insectoid mass murder that a celestial power had just committed on his behalf.

He decided to just prune the rhododendron and try very hard to not think about what may happen if the Lone Power continued to ignore Harry’s assurances that sunshine was free, and how It may choose to repay that debt.

 

~~~~~

 

Earth's sun had sunk low in the sky, and the reddish orange light was glinting off the windows of the flower shop when Roshaun's transit completed. Roshaun stepped out of the circle, and glanced around to make sure that no one was around, before muttering the words of the spell that would allow him to pass through the locked door undetected.

It was quite dim within the flower shop; the lights had been turned off when the shop closed for the day, and only the fading light of the sunset coming through the windows gave any illumination.

Roshaun didn't need much light to find what he was looking for, because he had a general idea of where it was in the flower shop, and sure enough, still on the shelf by the window, was a medium-sized barrel cactus in a clay pot painted with garish designs by an Earth artisan.

"Does the florist know you're skulking about his shop after hours?" the cactus asked, startling Roshaun.

Roshaun wasn't entirely certain how to respond, and the cactus took advantage of his hesitation. "Well then, obviously not, going by your expression. Then buddy, why are you here?"

"Honestly? I wished to speak to you." Roshaun didn't see any reason to lie to the cactus. Bernard, he reminded himself. Maybe it was a being associated with the enemy of all wizards, but it was still a living being, it still had a name, and it was still deserving of respect. And being respectful of it was likely the easiest way to convince it to help Roshaun figure out what The Lone Power was up to.

"Let me guess, you want to know what a nice cactus like me is doing with a Power like him?"

"Something to that effect." Roshaun located a stool behind the counter and pulled it over to Bernard's side of the room. "I am concerned, not only for Mr. Callahan, but for you." He looked at the cactus, still a bit too small to fill out the large pot that Mr. Callahan had bought for it, the scars of sunburn tracing emphasis over the edges of the cactus's body. Surrounding the cactus, there was a small tingle at the edge of a sense Roshaun wasn't sure he could even identify. "Are you okay? I've noticed you don't talk around It."

The cactus laughed. "Oh no, I’m not scared of him! No, it's just way too much fun to mess with him! He gets so frustrated when I don't talk to him, but he's just too stubborn to ask! So it's fun to tease him, make sure he doesn't get too big for his britches."

"He's not treating you badly is he?" Roshaun asked.

"Oh, no! No, he is annoyingly overbearing when it comes to taking care of me. Honestly, I would worry about the florist. He's always popping in to ask questions, at any time of day! 'How frequently do I need to water Bernard?' 'Is this really the best brand of fertilizer?' 'What SPF of sunscreen should I use to prevent sunburn from happening again?'" The cactus laughed again, swaying ever so slightly. "I don't even speak very much technology, but I could hear his phone grumbling about how much Googling it has to do every time he pops in here! Sun King my buddy, can you do me a solid and tell the florist to just buy a copy of a cactus care book and give it to him next time!? All of our lives will be easier if he just gets ‘Taking Care of a Cactus For Dummies.’"

Roshaun was not at all pleased at being addressed in that manner, but he brushed the annoyance aside. "Forgive me, but I am still skeptical. It seems rather far-fetched that the Power who invented death should suddenly be caring so much about supporting a life in this manner."

"Oh man, do you really not know the story about this dude?" The cactus did not have eyes, as most Earth plants do not, but it still exuded an air of gazing sidelong at Roshaun. "Well, you better settle in buddy, because boy do I have a story for you." The cactus settled in too, shifting itself a little lower in the pot, with a minute rustling and creaking of roots.

And what a story the cactus told! A story of forgiveness, redemption, and a single arrow, drawn up and out, in order to give the possibility of change.

A story that started, spontaneously, in the lobby of the MetLife building when the cactus was brought into existence.

Roshaun breathed out slowly. "I thought I sensed something odd about you, that first day."

"What, you were actually paying attention to something other than flinging potting soil at your mortal enemy?"

"If I did not have Gertrude for company, I would ask you if all cacti were this prickly or if it's just a side effect of coming from the core of a star." Now that Roshaun was aware, he could put a name to the tingly feeling that hovered around the cactus, the hint of a memory of solar winds and magnetic fields, dancing and rippling around the skin of a star, pulsing with heat and radiation and life.

"Yeah well, it's not like my ‘gold star pedigree’ helped me any with avoiding getting sunburned," the cactus grumbled, more than a touch bitter.

"I know that there are wizardly healers who specialize in plant life," Roshaun said. "If you wish, I could get in touch with some of them, and see if there's anything that can be done about your scars."

The cactus shrugged, the movement seeming exaggerated even though its individual spines were only moving a small amount each, like the motion of a wave going through a crowd. "No, I don't want them gone, they're part of me, you know? I mean, they don't hurt, so, whatever." The cactus's tone grew distant. "And I guess if you wanted me to come up with some pseudo philosophical whatever, I could maybe manage to spout something about being able to be a reminder that change isn't going to come all at once, and neither is perfection, so mistakes are going to happen, but it's okay that they do, because that's just life, you know?"

"You seem to care about him," Roshaun said, wondering.

"Well, I mean, he gave me a name," Bernard said. "He lit up a sun in his universe for me, and he pesters florists in other universes to make sure that he knows what else to do for me. He's never treated me badly, so why would I think badly of him?"In this universe, the sun had slipped below the horizon, and now Bernard was in silhouette, backlit by the flickering streetlight outside.

"And Sun King, buddy, you gotta stop thinking of him just as this big scary bad guy, all right? That's who he was, but not anymore, because he's had the chance to change, and he's taking it. For better or for worse."

"Is there a 'for worse' I should be aware of?" Roshaun asked.

The cactus snickered. "Well, now that you mention it, the sun really cut into his fire hydrant budget, so I've been having to deal with a truly disproportionate amount of pigeon poop. Got anything to help with that?"

Roshaun did not have an answer for the cactus.

 

~~~~~

 

It was an odd life that Bernard had. The early parts of it (or rather, the majority of it, given celestial timescales) were pleasant, if bland, just matter burning in the heart of a star, no more aware of itself than your heart is. Just as ours is a muscle pumping blood through our veins, the heart of a star pulses, and circulates, and regulates. It matters little what the blood is made of, for aren't we all star stuff in the end?

And then the great crush came, and the forces that twisted and pulled and rearranged, until somehow, things settled, bundled together in a space that lights could not escape. Waiting like that, cached, gone but not forgotten.

And then suddenly, it was ripped free, bursting with light and love and life, yanked the wrong way through a gnaester and organized from a coalesced blob of assorted elements into a living, breathing, photosynthesizing barrel cactus, with fancy terra-cotta pot included.

As confused as the security guards who had to investigate the spontaneously appearing cactus were, it paled in comparison to the confusion of the cactus itself, which had to suddenly come to terms with the fact that it existed, and that it was no longer just a blob of leftover star hovering within the claudication of a black hole turned emitter.

The humans squawked, and screamed, and talked, and eventually the cactus was shoved into a corner and forgotten about as night fell.

And even though the star this planet orbits is out of sight ( _It's so small,_ he thinks. _So cute. He could have eaten it for breakfast, even before he became part of the black hole's mass_ ), he can hear it, the hiss and crackle of its solar wind. It was maddeningly familiar, and he should be able to remember how to understand it. It wasn't long ago, that he was a star himself.

The hiss and crackle becomes more muted as the sun sets, then vanishes entirely. The cactus felt dread. Even if the entire planet were between him and the star, he would still be able to hear it. For the solar wind to be gone entirely… Did it mean he was losing the ability to hear it, or was it gone altogether?

He was a star once, and even rearranged into a cactus, he could feel the truth. The sun was gone.

"I didn't even have time to properly figure out how to be a cactus," Bernard protested to himself.

And then a wash of static came over him, the half heard, half felt rush of an explosion of celestial radiation.

He was the heart of a star once. He was the heart of a black hole once. He was the heart of a white hole once. And now, he had outlived them all.

The heart of the star became his own being, in the shape of a cactus.

He didn't have to ask himself if it was worth it, that so much of him would have to die, and that the rest would have to become something new. He knew that the only way to know the answer to that question, was to go find out.

He had to admit, that he came very close to answering "no" when the next living being he encountered was The Lone Power Itself.

He was terrified into muteness when The Lone Power picked him up and transported him straight out of the universe, heading sideways and backwards and clockwise until the cactus had to give up on trying to remember the dimensions it understood when it was a star, and just focus on the few available to the perceptions of organic life.

The next long while was a blur of fear and confusion as The Lone Power steadfastly refused to do anything in character of It. It did research to know how much water to give this new form of his; it set an appointment with a florist in that last universe to find out about fertilizer and re-potting; it even began fussing over how to allot enough energy to create a sun for this world, seemingly only motivated by the desire to take care of the cactus.

It had even given him a name. Bernard. It was simple, and short, and seemed to be derived from the same language that the florist spoke. When he heard it, an echo of star memory shivered across his mind. The name similar to, but slightly longer than something else he had been called, when he was a heart only, a piece of a larger whole that had tucked him away until later.

He had a name. It was his own.

And so he sits, in the office on the top floor of a tall, dark skyscraper, listening to the hiss and crackle of the sun, a star very new to this universe.

He should be able to understand it. He was a star once, or at least part of one.

That part of him is gone now, faded like the aurora left behind after the explosion.

Bernard is not sure how to mourn his own death. Or even if he should.

And now, the universe that he thought he knew, is changing. There is light, there is love, and there is life.

The being that he had once called Starsnuffer has grown into something that can be nurturing, and caring.

He can feel the echo of it sometimes, that arrow drawn up and out, in ink tinged with the reflection of the being that he was part of before he was a cactus. The simple lines, carrying so much power. A single symbol to allow change.

Change had been trying to happen. All it needed was the chance, and now that it had been set free, it was not wasting any time.

 

~~~~~

 

Bright sunlight streamed into the windows of the top floor of the dark skyscraper, catching the unnaturally white flowers of the blooming cactus sitting on the desk, making the petals appear to glow, like a will-o’-the-wisp plugged into too much current and about to blow out.

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal love and gratitude to my wonderful beta reader [fulldaysdrive](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fulldaysdrive) for helping me polish this into a gold star pedigree fic!
> 
> goonlalagoon on Tumblr made some [amazing fanart for this fic!](http://goonlalagoon.tumblr.com/post/163300466505/waaay-back-when-i-first-read-what-the-butterflies)


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